On the Other Side of the Reeds
by Kaira Sakamoto
Summary: 100 word drabbles of two Sole Survivors where if things had been different, if the other had died instead, these would be their stories. M!SS and F!SS. Alexander and Alexis Reed, alternating. Rated for future chapters. Chapter 5: Psycho.
1. Alexander: The First Day

On that first day, Alexander buried his face in his hands and sat out on what was left of his front porch until the sun set and rose and then set again. He fell back into old wartime habits easier than he used to believe he could. A chasm had opened up in those minutes that she'd died, and the cries of his stolen son still reverberated in his ears. Now that chasm was sucking down every ounce of light and color in the world faster and more eagerly than Shaun had ever sucked down a bottle.

When he blinked back at the world hours later, he had blood crusted on his face and an unfamiliar weapon against his palms that hummed vaguely laser-like. The blue sky was gone, awash with dying purples, and that all that was left for him was gunmetal grey and orange rust caked on an empty T-45a that reminded him of far, far too much.


	2. Alexis: Tin Cans and Booming Steps

Over late nights and coffee, her husband once described power armor to her as "an experience." He'd been unable to explain it further and she'd never pushed more than that. He'd never been the greatest with words that weren't a soldier's bluntness or the gush of love to their dog before it'd run, and she'd never blamed him for the lack of it. "Maybe at the next war, you'll join me," he'd said once in a voice that was more serious than it should have been. They'd laughed together than.

She's not laughing now.

Her breath is filtered in a tin can that booms with every footstep and it's too close to her and every muscle she has is screaming. Why did she do this? There's a reason why most need training for this. Snatching the minigun off the vertibird, feeling it rip like paper from its mount, is too easy, but the gun itself is too unwieldy. Awkward. And then that _thing_. A deathclaw. God, a monster; going toe-to-toe with her. She's a lawyer, not a soldier. Her battles are quick-witted words, not – not _this_.

She wishes he were here, as stupid as it sounds — how impossible, with him dead and rotting in a TV dinner box she couldn't switch closed once she'd seen him so still. He'd know where to huddle up and hide, how to take it down. Her brave, war-torn and gentle soldier. She can almost hear him and god, it's so pathetic that it settles something inside her.

 _Damn impressive_ , Garvey called her.

Sure, she thinks – he didn't hear her screaming.


	3. Alexander: I'm Not Lost, Right?

Every day is another habit fallen back into. He opens his eyes at 4am every morning, checks his guns, stares out to the still dark skies, and pretends that he remembers what happened the day before when he'd stalked through the ruins of the towns he'd known so well. He forgets to count the days and hopes that when he sleeps it's only for one night and not for the rest of his life because the last time he'd slept it'd been a nightmare from start to finish. He reminds himself: the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. On the compass, there are really eight directions, not four. Not every road is a straight line.

A new action is added every day to the old.

He listens to the radio when he sets up camp and dreams of cold summer nights in Anchorage or the taste of his wife on his lips or the way she'd looked at him through a plexiglass cell and told him that he wouldn't be put away for life. He dreams of a red haze of rage he'd had no control over and the sting of an injection at his elbow.

He wakes with a start and stares out at the still-dark sky until the stars get fed up with shining. He checks his guns as the dog eats 200 year old cat food somehow perfectly preserved and manages a smile when the animal digs out the teddy bear from his pack. The pipboy says November 25th but he's not quite sure when he'd last checked. _Shaun,_ he thinks, his face in his hands. _My son. Shaun. How long has it been?_

He loses track. The sun sets in the west. His power armor casts an ever expanding shadow over the road curving toward the opposite horizon. The radio turns on.

He closes his eyes and dreams.


	4. Alexis: I Have A Direction - It's Shaun

She's terrible with directions. It's something she'd never cared to correct — never had to because of Xander who, as a soldier, had to learn the skill the hard way and had given up on her almost from the get-go. It's only worse after the war, where all but the most familiar of things – and even those at times – have been destroyed down to their foundations; where winding alleyways have become mazes and traps and scattered, scrapped forests rather than cities or towns. She plants a mark on her pipboy and gets lost going straight but her thoughts chant _Shaun Shaun Shaun_ with every second counted in her head, every pulse of her sore aching feet. She learns, instead, to keep track of time rather than directions, and hopes that by the end she won't lose sight of what she used to be.


	5. Alexander: Psycho

The first time he sees it he nearly doesn't know what it is. True recognition of things have a hard time settling in nowadays and this day is no different. It's such a simple, tiny thing.

His hand starts shaking when he remembers. _It'll help boost your damage_ , they'd told him. It did that but they had said nothing about the sheer rage it invoked that made you blind to who you were fighting. When they'd found him, he'd been beating into his recon partner, nearly as drugged and beat up as he himself was, with blood on both of their fists and their guns up on the ridge, forgotten. They'd left their posts in the haze and it was sheer dumb luck that they'd been in an isolated camp. That they hadn't been killed in their high or worse.

The memories of that night are still filtered all these years later and the leftover trembling had taken most of his attention afterwards. He hadn't been able to forget the lift it'd brought from the reality of war. For once he hadn't felt cold. Then the cold had crept back in and everything kept shocking him and he wasn't even allowed to see his partner and _no one would tell him what happened_.

The higher ups had expressed disapproval but it didn't stop them from providing more of the drug to soldiers going into isolated communist camps in order to slaughter the soldiers inside. He'd soon found out that the high wasn't as great as the first injection, and that the cold and the fear and the loneliness always tore its way back into his bones eventually. The red-warm rage never stayed for long.

The sight of the psycho now filled him with dread. When he'd last heard of it, it hadn't been released properly into Boston. There'd only been rumors. That it was here on a single raider twisted his guts into knots. He hoped it wasn't common, but the migraine he had at the memories told him the opposite. All he could recall was the trouble it caused him and the withdrawal he'd gone through, huddle in the corner of a cold, empty place.

He pocketed it anyway, and heard the slamming of jail cell doors distantly in his head.


End file.
